Whatsapp officially arrives on desktop, but there’s catch

Yesterday Whatsapp gave a bad news to those who were enjoying company’s service on a third-party client. Today, there’s a good news. If you’re one of those hundreds of millions of Whatsapp users who uses the service on Android and is tired of typing every single message on the phone then this is a great news for you – albeit a little later, but finally Whatsapp is getting its own official web app. Although it’s not an ideal web app and will work only with Google Chrome, still for now it’s sufficient.

For now the web app is available only to users who use Whatsapp on an Android device, Windows phone and Blackberry (leaving out iPhone users in dark), but we feel that the app may become available to users of other platforms as well in upcoming days; it’s just a matter of time. Right now the web app only mirrors conversations from Android app to web app. It means both your devices (the phone and Chrome browser on your desktop) should be connected to the internet simultaneously to get it working. The app doesn’t receive messages from Whatsapp servers and receives them from your phone instead.

WhatsApp Web

The company said in a post on its official blog that the web client is simply an extension of the smartphone app as it mirrors conversations from your phone. That means all your messages will still live and land in the phone first.

To get the setup working first of all you’ll need the latest version of Whatsapp’s android application, which is 2.11.500. Second, you’ll need the Google Chrome browser, if you don’t have already. Support for other browsers may also be on its way, but for now you’ll have to have Chrome. Once you’ve both these things in place, you can setup the web app by following the steps given below:

First, open the updated version of Whatsapp’s android application on your phone.

Now visit web.whatsapp.com on your desktop in Chrome browser. This will provide you a QR code that you’ll need to scan from the Whatsapp application in your smartphone.

Now navigate to the menu of your smartphone’s Whatsapp application where you’ll find “Whatsapp web” option. Select it and scan the QR code shown in your desktop browser.

Done!

Remember, you’ll have to keep your phone turned on and connected to the internet to keep this setup working. If your phone’s battery dies or anything else happens due to which it disconnects from the internet, your Whatsapp web app connection will also die immediately.